Rescuing the Czar: Two authentic diaries arranged and translatedSmythe, James P.
History
Rescuing the Czar: Two authentic diaries arranged and translated
Smythe, James P.
Diary fiction; Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1868-1918 -- Fiction; Russia -- History -- Nicholas II, 1894-1917 -- Fiction
Everybody is sure and proud that he is building up the new Russia.
Lawyers and doctors, engineers and priests, all run with busy
faces,--they think a statesman of today must run,--everybody gives
orders, counter-orders, nobody carries them out, nobody listens. There
are about 200,000 Napoleons in Petrograd today; as they multiply by
section, this number will be enormous before long. The situation,
however, does not improve....
In the office there was quite a discussion of the probabilities, and
I was listening to the younger people. Criticism and "my own opinion"
are the main sicknesses. Perhaps the private initiative used to be so
hardly oppressed, that it comes out at present in excess.
Why should lawyers be convinced, that their profession gives them
the right, _primo genio_ to be statesmen? I should suggest an
archeologist, or a man in charge of a lighthouse.
4.
We all went to the "Farce," Maroossia and F., myself and Misha.
Afterwards we had supper. At the next table to us were the M's.,
Alexander Ivanitsky and the Baroness B. Since her return she certainly
looks much better. At first I did not see her, then before all she
reprimanded me in her usual kind manner. She had grown a little
thinner and has more jewelry I should say, and is as fascinating as
before. When she speaks one can see that she thinks of far distant
things.
"We all are busy these days," she said, when I asked her whether she
came here from England just for curiosity to see all of us under the
Provisional Government. "You did not change at all." Misha, who did
not know B. before, did not like her very much,--in fact, they all
think she is suspicious. Aren't these youngsters peculiar? Especially
Misha who is so grouchy lately--all seems dangerous to him. I never
think that a woman can be anything but pretty or hideous. There is no
middle, and no suspicion about them. If a woman is, what they perhaps
would call "suspicious"--then there is a man's influence behind
her--so find the man (and it is easy) and she is as plain as a card
on the table. Baroness B. is pretty. And if she likes to talk like a
Pythia,--that's her way of making people interested in her.
Maroossia complained of a headache, so we left early. Baroness is in
the Hotel d'Europe--she is so sorry that "her Astoria" became such a
hole. Well--not only her Astoria.
5.
It certainly would be a wonder to expect anything but confusion from
the men who recently became the leaders of 180 millions. The leaders
are sure they can make wonders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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